England need a new approach

England have been accused of showing unfathomable faith in a formula for failure after a humiliating World Cup defeat to Sri Lanka.

A third thumping defeat of the tournament, this time by nine wickets in Wellington, plunged England into a deep hole from which they might not escape.

England must win their final two group games against lower-ranked Bangladesh and Afghanistan in the next fortnight or face the unthinkable prospect of going home prematurely.

Former England team-mates Graeme Swann and Kevin Pietersen have questioned the team's World Cup tactics

The ease with which Sri Lanka chased down England's 309 for six sent alarm bells ringing far and wide, especially among former players.

Graeme Swann said the team are "living in the past", Kevin Pietersen was left incredulous by the reliance on statistics, and Geoffrey Boycott labelled Eoin Morgan's troops "not a force to be reckoned with at all".

After drubbings by New Zealand and Australia, the two co-hosts, England at least looked to have put a decent score on the board against Sri Lanka, which was largely down to a fine century from Joe Root and some lusty hitting in the closing overs from Jos Buttler.

But tons from Lahiru Thirimanne and Kumar Sangakkara made the job look easy for Sri Lanka.

Bangladesh are next up for England, on March 9 in Adelaide, and exiled batsman Pietersen said: " It's huge. I love the players that are playing for England at the moment. They're a great bunch of guys. And I really don't like to see England lose."

He added on Sky Sports: "This is a new modern era of cricket with changes in regulations, fielding restrictions, bigger bats, power players. I think the England team need to stop worrying about statistics and they need to go out there and play an aggressive brand of cricket: hit the ball, bowl the ball fast and get it in the right areas and stop talking about statistics."

Former England spinner Swann called on the England and Wales Cricket Board to recognise that its tactical approach belongs to yesteryear .

Swann wrote on Twitter: "A positive thing that can come of this world cup is that maybe the top brass will realise just how out of date our approach is."

He also told BBC Radio 5 Live: "I think the problem lies not just with the bowling but the whole approach. It was a very self-congratulatory 310, everyone was saying 'brilliant'. These days that's about average and not a great score."

Swann feels the answer to England's batting problems could lie with a former Nottinghamshire team-mate, adding: "We have a lad in Alex Hales, one of these new generation players who does go out and knock it about, he tries to smash everything for four and six. We need to get these young lads playing. We have too many people running it, too many people involved, too many plans and I think we're just living in the past."

Former England captain Michael Vaughan added on Twitter: "We are watching a era of Cricket where if you are predictable you will end up with a predictable outcome."

Boycott said the England team were not being realistic when the problems were clear to most observers.

He told BBC 5 Live: "We are not a force to be reckoned with at all. The batting was quite good, but the bowling? No, no, sorry. It wasn't very challenging."

Boycott added: "The sad thing for me, even Joe Root, (he gave) a nice interview, lovely lad, but there's no realism. They keep telling us 'we'll take the positives, we did well, we did this'.

"They are trying to tell us little things and we don't see them. They think ex-players like us are just watching to criticise, we're not, we want you to win. But we can only tell you what we see and you keep losing."

The incoming ECB chairman Colin Graves feels that England need to look closely at their approach to one-day cricket.

He said: "The main thing is, you look at the World Cup and it's very aggressive early on, are our players as aggressive as the others? We need to talk about those things."